Logitech Cordless 2.4GHz Presenter

Wednesday, August 3, 2005

A client asked me to pick up a clicker for him this week and our local MicroCenter doesn’t keep much in stock (the Westerville store was the second MC to open and is the smallest store they have). The only product in stock was a new device from Logitech called the Logitech Cordless 2.4GHz Presenter.Â It was tucked in with the mice, but the little LCD screen on the front caught my eye.

The unit is long, similar in length to the Keyspan model, but it is covered in a smooth but grippable black plastic. The one thing that sets this clicker apart is the lcd screen on the front. This is the first clicker I’ve ever seen that has a built-in timer, which you can set in 5 minute increments. No more messing with clocks or trying to see your mac screen during your talk!

In the package you’ll fine a neoprene pouch that fits the unit snugly, and inside that you’ll find the two AAA batteries that run the unit. Other than the multi-lingual instruction booklet, that’s all that’s included. The USB adapter for the unit slides right into the top, near the laser pointer window, and has a tiny lip on it, making it easy to pull out. This is really nice compared with some units I’ve played with that either had a huge adapter, or had to have a large case to hold both the clicker and the adapter.

On the face of the unit are 5 buttons: F5/esc, Black, Back, Forward and laser pointer. The ONLY button that didn’t work fully was the F5/esc. It’s supposed to start a show, but in keynote it only causes the computer to beep (several readers have mentioned that you can customize the keyboard shortcuts in OS X and enable f5 to kick in your shows). Once the show is running however, this button will escape out of the show, so it does partially work. be CAREFUL when using this with PowerPoint as I noticed the F5 button actually can delete text or entire slides when you’re in edit mode. All the other buttons work fine, including the two volume up/down buttons that are on the side of the unit. It would be nice to have a Mute button, but it’s very usable as is.

On the right side of the unit, mostly out of fingers reach when you’re holding it during a presentation, is the timer button. Clicking it once puts you into timer edit mode, clicking it again adds 5 minutes of time. Continue clicking and you get 5 minutes added each time, up to 9 hours and 50 minutes (I’m hoping none of you actually speak that long!). Press and hold the button and the timer goes back to zero.

The LCD screen displays the timer, a battery meter, and a 4 part bar that I assume drops a bar during each quarter of your talk. I tested it with 5 min and it worked its way down through the bars about each minute. Once really cool feature that might also be a reason NOT to use this unit is the vibrate alert. At 5 min and 2 min the unit actually vibrates in your hand. It’s a very short burst, and even sitting on a desk I barely heard it, so it’s not like a cell phone going off, so for most people it won’t be such a shock as to make you jump in front of your audience. It also vibrates when the timer runs out, and the screen flashes for a second or so.

On the left side of the unit, near the top (above the volume buttons) is an on/off switch. No more wearing down your remotes in your bag! When you turn on the unit, it vibrates and the screen comes on. The last button is on the back. Logitech included a flush reset button, just in case the unit messes up or doesn’t respond. Hopefully you won’t need to mess with that.

To get the unit working with your Mac simply pull the usb adapter out of the top of it and plug it into a usb port. On my PowerBook the New Keyboard setup screen appeared, but since there are no drivers, I just closed the window without going through the setup. Once you’ve plugged in the adapter, open up Keynote or PPT, start your show and click away. If you need yo drop the volume on say, an embedded movie, just click the volume buttons. Once suggestion if you plan to do this is to turn OFF the audible notice your machine gives you when you adjust the volume. You can do this in the Sound prefs. Just uncheck the box labeled “Play feedback when volume is changed.”

Overall, for a unit marked for use with a PC, this little clicker works exceptionally well. I was able to walk into another room in my house and click it, when I came back to my office, the next slide was up. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the volume buttons actually worked, and the little things like vibrate alert and a timer just add icing to the cake. Considering this thing sells for $69.95, it’s a steal, especially if you don’t need to custom configure extra buttons, but want something a step above the regular forward/backward units that are out there.

I picked one up after doing some research and taking a chance. Gotta say, it works with my pbG4/osX10.4.6 & keynote 3.01 perfectly right out of the box! All the keys work fine, and it’s got a good range/response time. The only odd thing is that the “F5/esc” button will not start a presentation, but it will return it to the slide editing view. Overall, very happy with it!

I’m looking into getting one of these and had a thought on the F5/esc key button not starting a presentation. I went into the Keyboard preferences to the Keyboard Shortcuts tab and added F5 as the “Play Slideshow” shortcut (note: you actually have to select other, then find Keynote… I think it doesn’t show up in the applications menu because it’s in the iWork folder).

I then opened Keynote and sure enough, F5 was listed as the shortcut for Play Slideshow, I hit F5 and it started.

Not sure if it will translate to using the button, but logically… it should. If no one gets a chance to try it I’ll update here when I get mine.

I tried Michael’s plan of changing the Keyboard Preferences to get the F5/Esc button to work – it didn’t do the trick. If it worked for Michael, please post your solution again. Also, the Black Screen button doesn’t work for me using Keynote 3.01. Is it working for anyone else. The original review indicated it worked. It just stops the slide show for me.

Just tried it out on my computer and everything – including Michael’s hint worked like a charm. The key is to add the exact wording of the command you want to add. In this case, “play slideshow”. I then had to restart keynote and it all worked just fine.

I’ve been trying to decide between the Logitech presenter and the (sleeker) Kensington Wireless Presenter. Similar in price but the Kensingon device does not have the countdown tools, though it is smaller and much sexier looking.

I was initially put off by the F5 button which I had read wouldn’t work for Keynote, but the above tip has changed my mind. If you can customize a keyboard shortcut for F5 then in theory this button could be used for anything that can have a keyboard shortcut. These wouldn’t have to be specific to Keynote, i.e. show desktop, zoom in, but there are a lot of Keynote keyboard shortcuts whilst in presentation mode (see the Keynote help for more). E,g. show white screen, show black screen, hide presentation, pause/play movies etc. I’m sure other people could come up with creative uses for this.

My remote arrived today and my first action was to set up the F5 button to start the slideshow. With some experimentation I’ve discoverered that the various buttons on the remote send the following keyboard commands:

Note that there are many different keys that you can use in Keynote to advance slides and builds. The fact that the Logitech remote uses page up and page down, means that your remote will also work to scroll up and down in many other applciations. Also, if you press any number during your presentation you will access the slide navigator tool (one of the things that I love about Keynote) and now the left/right buttons on the remote will also allow you to choose slides (though you still need to hit enter on the keyboard to select the actual slide).

I confirmed the dual nature of the F5/esc button by reassigning F5 to the paste command in TextEdit. The first press of the remote button would paste some text, the second press would open the spelling suggestion pop-up window. This also explains that sometimes it takes two presses of this button to launch the presentation in keynote (it depends on whether the last press was the F5 or escape action).

The mapping of the black screen button to the . (period) key makes sense in Powerpoint as this is the key that blanks the screen. However, in Keynote the period key is one of the keys that you can press to quit a presentation (though I assume that most people always hit escape). Sadly, the keyboard preferences in Mac OS X do not allow you to reassign a shortcut to just a vanilla key without a modifier key also being pressed (command, option, control etc.). This makes the blank button of the remote pretty much useless (in Keynote). Especially when the second press of the F5/esc button will also quit the presentation

I wonder if there is a way of doing anything more with this…would be great if you could overide the volume up/down buttons to also act as controllers.

I work for a national business trade magazine and we have a section where business professionals review business tools. I would be interested in having someone who owns and uses this presenter contribute a review for the section. If you are interested in contributing a review to the magazine please e-mail me at steakley@gmail.com.